Ian Welsh

The horizon is not so far as we can see, but as far as we can imagine

I Miss the Lies of the 1990s but I Don’t Want to Go Back

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On February 17, 2026

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Watching this Richard J. Murphy podcast with John Christensen I was struck by an anecdote that Christensen shared about corruption on the Isle of Jersey in the late 1990s (note that I didn’t have time to confirm spelling of the proper names mentioned or fact check, so I’m redacting those):

John Christensen:I for quite a long time I had been very disillusioned with the government in Jersey. It’s become clear to me that by and large the the regulatory pro processes the laws in play and regulations in place were window dressing exercises and there was very very weak enforcement or compliance.

So the whole thing as far as I was concerned was a charade.

Late one January evening (and this is 1996) the phone went at my home and it was a Wall Street Journal investigating investigating journalist calling an and he started questioning me about a currency trader who was operating in Jersey and a subsidiary of the Swiss bank UBS.

The subsidiary was called [redacted] and and and a major churn client churning exercise which had cost a bunch of American investors tens of millions of (dollars).

And what he said was that the government of Jersey was thwarting any attempt at investigating this and allowing these investors who had lost tens of millions to have access to justice.

I said, “I know nothing about this whatsoever.”

He clearly thought I was bullshitting. He said, “But it’s your department that issued the license to the currency trader to trade in Jersey. (The trader) was not a Jerseyman, and it’s your department that gave him the housing or or supported his application for a housing license to rent property in Jersey.

And I said, “Well, to be honest, mate, I know everything that goes on in my department. I’ve never heard of this.”

He clearly thought I was a liar. And I did a deal. I said I will go in first thing tomorrow morning and check the files and if what you’ve said is correct then I will help you. I will cooperate.

Now I was in this extraordinary situation because I was a very senior civil servant. In fact I headed the government economic service. Part of my job was to work with international media.

I went in, checked everything he said, stood up and I realized that in order to circumvent me and my department, my boss, [redacted], the chief adviser…had gone round my back um and issued a license which should never have been issued and had given support for a housing consent which by policy should not have been supported.

And he’d done that because it turns out that at that at the time when this felony started, the most important politician in Jersey happened to be a member of the board of [redacted].

So here’s corruption in a very British form.
…
Another part of the corruption lay with the media in Jersey. BBC Radio Jersey never asked the the correct questions. The Jersey Evening Post never asked the correct questions; which were how the hell did this guy get a license to operate in Jersey and how the hell did he get a housing permit?

Because both were against government policy. And the reason they did that was because the Jersey Eden Post at that time belonged to a very senior politician which itself is corrupt.

This is all very British. This is the way things operate in Britain.

Journalists go to great lengths to not ask the right questions because they are themselves corrupted. …It was a staterun organ in effect at that period and it probably still is to some extent.

This anecdote raised conflicting points in my mind.

On the one hand, I admire the seriousness, technical expertise, and ethics of Murphy and Christensen. They represent the best of their generation and have multiple qualities I don’t see from younger reformers.

I also am nostalgic for an era in which a whistleblower like Christensen could actually make an impact by talking to the press. People were tried and convicted, etc.

That kind of thing is much missed in the Trump/Starmer era.

On the other hand, my lived experience of the 1990s contrasts so strongly with how the period is damned to be remembered historically that it inspires awe at the power of the dominant narrative in the West in that era.

The 1990s was the age of Sir Jimmy Saville after all.

In America we had Bill Cosby and Woody Allen, who may not have been knighted but had a comparable status as secular sages, beloved and admired.

Of course, we didn’t know then what we know now about Saville being a prolific sex predator, or Cosby being a serial rapist or in Allen’s case, people were trying to tell us, but many people were convinced his marriage to his ex-wife’s daughter was a love match.

We certainly didn’t know Woody was having dinner with Noam Chomsky….and a man we hadn’t heard of yet named Jeffrey Epstein.

It was comforting to watch the official propaganda of Ken Burns’ Civil War series on PBS and be reassured about the noble nature of both sides in that war and then follow it up with Eyes on the Prize which taught us that things had been bad in the racist past but the miraculous 1960s had solved everything.

Perhaps I was just young and naive, but in the 1990s it somehow seemed plausible to accept the mythologies of the capitalist west.

Things like the Iran-Contra Scandal or Watergate showed that there was corruption, but it was limited and could be dealt with.

After all, wasn’t that bright young Rudy Guliani bringing down the Mafia itself?

Hadn’t the evil empire of the USSR fallen without a war?

Hadn’t an American president united the whole world against Saddam Hussein’s aggression and fought and won a war to liberate Kuwait?

Even better hadn’t the Color Revolution in Serbia shown that Gene Sharp had distilled the non-violent revolutionary techniques of Gandhi and MLK into a formidable instrument for freedom?

From the vantage point of 2026, post-Enron, post-9/11, post-2008, post-Maidan, post-Trump/Brexit, post-COVID, it’s just as impossible to look back fondly at Gene Sharp and company as it is to enjoy the comedy of Bill Cosby with your kids.

Yes, it is upsetting and alarming to watch David Ellison’s CBS blatantly censoring a late night show or US Secretary of State Marco Rubio declaring a new era of colonialism, but perhaps it’s good that the lies of this era are so flagrant.

Pre-Internet Journalism Was Optimized For Information Transfer Efficiency, Post-Internet For Inefficiency

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On February 16, 2026

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We’ve all seen the titles of articles “Big Company decides to do something BAD” or “This famous actor’ adorable dog saved his life!”.

Click bait. The information you want is “what the big company is what big company did what, or who the actor is.

Back when we had newspapers the titles would have been “X AI is making degrading nudes of people without their consent”. It would name the actor.

The rules of pre-internet Journalism were as follows: the most important information goes into the headline. The first paragraph summarizes the article and each paragraph after includes information in order of importance, with the least important information in the second last paragraph. The last paragraph sums up the article again.”

The rule of thumb I was taught is that half the readers only read the title and that you should expect to lose half the remaining readers per paragraph. I don’t think it was always that bad, and it varied by type of article, more people will read an entire book or movie review, for example, but the thrust of it was correct.

Newspapers knew that people wouldn’t read the whole article so tried to get the most important information to them first, the second next and so on.

Modern internet journalism optimized for clicks and for time on site. The title leaves out the important information to get a click. The article is often written so that the most important information is near or at the end, so you have to read all the way thru, with paragraphs before that being teases, meant to keep you reading.

One reason people are more likely to be ignorant today is simply this change from “get them the information they need as fast as possible” to “get them to click and stay on site as long as possible.” Bonus points if you can get them to click on more links inside your site. While strictly speaking internet news isn’t optimized for inefficiency, it might as well be: that’s the effect.

Overall I think that the internet has been bad for humanity. I don’t make this judgment call lightly, I make my living here, after all, and there’s a lot I love about the internet, especially the ease of looking up information.

Inefficient information transfer is just one part of why the internet has been bad for humans, I’m going to return to this issue over and over during the next few weeks.

This site is only viable due to reader donations. If you value it and can, please subscribe or donate.

Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – February 15, 2026

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On February 15, 2026

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Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – February 15, 2026

by Tony Wikrent

They’re not capitalists — they’re predatory criminals

Why The Epstein Scandal Is Really A Billionaire Scandal – Barry’s Economics (YouTube)

Barry Ferns, Feb 8, 2026 [YouTube]

Everyone thinks Jeffrey Epstein was an aberration. The science says he was inevitable. This video breaks down the neuroscience, psychology, and economics that explain how extreme wealth concentration doesn’t just create inequality. but manufactures monsters.

00:00 – Introduction: The Elephant in the Room

02:04 – Part One: Power Rewires the Brain

03:30 – Part Two: The Empathy Gap and Isolation

05:19 – Part Three: Moral Licensing

08:13 – Part Four: Structural Impunity

10:50 – Part Five: Manufacturing Vulnerability

12.54 – Part Six: The Epstein Economy

15:53 – Stand-up Comedy Relief

The Epstein class and collapse porn 

Cory Doctorow, 09 Feb 2026 [Pluralistic]

… The latest batch of Epstein emails includes a particularly ghoulish exchange between Epstein and his business partner, the anti-democracy activist and billionaire Peter Thiel:

https://www.justice.gov/epstein/files/DataSet%209/EFTA00824843.pdf

The email is dated 26 Jun 2016, right after Brexit, and in it, Epstein writes:

  • “… return to tribalism . counter to globalization. amazing new alliances. you and I both agreed zero interest rates were too high, as i said in your office. finding things on their way to collapse , was much easier than finding the next bargain….”

This is a perfect example of what Naomi Klein calls “disaster capitalism.” It’s been the norm since the crash of 2008, when bankers were made whole through public bailouts and mortgage holders were evicted by the millions to “foam the runway” for the banks:

https://wallstreetonparade.com/2012/08/how-treasury-secretary-geithner-foamed-the-runways-with-childrens-shattered-lives/

The crash of 2008 turned a lot of people’s homes – their only substantial possessions – into “distressed assets” that were purchased at fire-sale prices by Wall Street investors, who turned around and rented those homes out to people who were now priced out of the housing market at rents that kept them too poor to ever afford a home, under slum conditions that crawled with insects and black mold:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/10/01/housing-is-a-human-right/

Note here that economic collapse helps the Epstein class only if society has no social safety net. If Obama had supported homeowners instead of banks, there wouldn’t have been a foreclosure crisis and thus there wouldn’t have been any “distressed assets” flooding the market.

So it’s no surprise that the Epstein class are also obsessed with austerity. Peter Mandelson (British Labour’s “Prince of Darkness”) is a close ally of Epstein’s, and also a key figure in the crushing austerity agenda of Blair, Brown and Starmer. He’s a machine for turning Parliamentary majorities into distressed assets at scale….

The thousand-plus children that Epstein lured to his island rape-camp were often “distressed assets” in their own right: Julie K Brown’s groundbreaking reporting on Epstein for the Miami Herald described how he sought out children whose parents were poor, or neglectful, or both, on the grounds that those children would be “on their way to collapse,” too.

The Epstein class’s commitment to destroying “The Economy” makes sense when you understand that trashing civilization is “much easier than finding the next bargain.” They want to buy the dip, so they’re creating the dip.

They don’t need the whole number to go up, just theirs. They know that inclusive economies are more prosperous for society as a whole, but it makes criminals and predators worse off. The New Deal kicked off a period of American economic growth never seen before or since, but the rich despised it, because a prosperous economy is one in which it gets harder and harder to find “things on their way to collapse,” and thus nearly impossible to “find[] the next bargain.”

[TW: On October 30, 2025 Patriotic Millionaires posted a summary of modern studies which prove the corrupting power of wealth. But the problem of the psycho-pathology of the rich has been known for centuries:

[“It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God” is repeated three times in the New Testament, in Matthew 19:24, Mark 10:25, and Luke 18:25.

[In The Spirit of Laws, Book 5. Chapter 5, ”In what Manner the Laws establish Equality in a Democracy,” Montesquieu warned for “men of overgrown estates, everything which does not contribute to advance their power and honor is considered by them as an injury.…” ]

Why Do the Epstein Files Matter? An Expert on the Elites Explains Why

Mehdi Hasan and Team Zeteo, Feb 05, 2026 [via Naked Capitalism 02-10-2025]

In this can’t-miss ‘Mehdi Unfiltered’ interview, the Financial Times’ US editor and veteran columnist Edward Luce takes Mehdi on a deep dive into what it all means, and the who’s-who of those that appeared in the files, from Donald Trump, Steve Bannon, and Howard Lutnick, to Elon Musk, Noam Chomsky, and former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak….
During the wide-ranging interview, the Mehdi and Luce also discuss:
  • The world leader that could be brought down by the latest release of the Epstein files (hint: it’s not Trump!)
  • Epstein’s deep involvement with Israeli and Russian intelligence services
  • Why Joe Biden and then-Attorney General Merrick Garland didn’t do anything with these incriminating Epstein files when they were in office….

“It’s an MRI of how things work in a culture where shame has vanished,” Luce tells Mehdi.

[TW: If a reader has access, hopefully they will post a report or parts of a transcript.]

The slow Epstein earthquake: The rupture between the people and the élites

Alastair Crooke, February 9, 2026 [defenddemocracy.press]

Americans Want Accountability With the Epstein Files. Elites Couldn’t Care Less.

Dylan Gyauch-Lewis, February 10 2026 [The Intercept]

The list of elites who maintained close relationships with Epstein is long and includes prominent politicians, media figures, academics, and business leaders. In contrast, the list of people who have faced any meaningful consequences, at least in the United States, is so far quite short. Recently, Brad Karp, a top Democratic Party fundraising “bundler,” was removed as chair of the white-shoe law firm Paul Weiss after his extensive ties to Epstein were revealed. Peter Attia, the celebrity doctor and a new hire at Bari Weiss’ CBS News, resigned from a protein bar company after emails showed him making dirty jokes with Epstein. The economist Larry Summers was deemed toxic after a previous DOJ disclosure, went on leave from teaching at Harvard, and was unceremoniously dropped by numerous institutions. So far, that’s about the extent of it.

To be very explicit, this lack of serious consequences is a choice that powerful people in the United States are making. Meanwhile, in the United Kingdom, Prince Andrew is prince no more, reduced to merely Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor after King Charles removed all of his remaining royal titles; the former CEO of Barclays has been barred from the finance industry; the British ambassador to the United States, Peter Mandelson, has been forced out; Morgan McSweeney, Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s chief of staff and a Mandelson protege, was forced to resign under pressure; and Starmer risks losing his post over the Mandelson appointment. In Slovakia, the national security adviser to the prime minister has resigned. Accountability, if you care to enforce it, is in fact possible.

But on this side of the pond, elites have moved to protect powerful people with Epstein connections (themselves included). Donald Trump is the most obvious example; for any other president, the relationship between the two men would have been a fast track to impeachment. The documents also reveal how many powerful people maintained relationships with Epstein years after he was convicted of soliciting a minor for prostitution in 2008: Among them are former presidential adviser and current podcast bro Steve Bannon, Trump’s Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, Tesla et al. CEO and “MechaHitler” progenitor Elon Musk, LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman, Palantir co-founder Peter Thiel, and Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates. Extensive redactions to the documents by the Justice Department have slow-walked matters even further, but on Tuesday, Rep. Ro Khanna took aim by reading off the names of “six wealthy, powerful men that the DOJ hid for no apparent reason” on the floor of Congress.

[TW: I want to break this out, as snark:

It is worth being quite clear here: This does not mean everyone who makes any appearance at all in the files needs to be excised from public life. For instance, the political commentators Megan McArdle, Josh Barro, Ben Dreyfuss, and Ross Douthat recently recorded a podcast episode titled “We’re All in the Epstein Files,” which notes that they all are there because of tweets that a third party shared with Epstein, mostly via a newsletter sent out by Gregory Brown. That sort of thing is not the point. In order to actually clean house, we need to be clear where the dirt is.

[A poster on Facebook argued that instead, we should use the same approach that ICE is using against undocumented aliens — round up, arrest and detain in some unknown place, everyone who appears to have had some connection to Epstein and Maxwell. Without due process, of course. What’s good for the goose is good for the gander.]

Epstein Files May Give ‘Blackmail’ a Whole New Meaning — What might Epstein buddy Leon Black have on Trump?

[Going Deep with Russ Baker, Feb 08, 2026]

Why Is Canadian Media Silent on Conrad Black Being in the Epstein Files?

Dougald Lamont, Feb 09, 2026

[TW: In the 1990s I was writing about Conrad Black’s shady business dealings at his Hollinger media cartel empire — half a billion dollars “lost” in two years in the late 90s — and helping trace his links to the British establishment that included former high level managers from MI-5 and MI-6. Black was a financial backer of one of the most destructive US neocons, Richard Perle. In the 1980s, Black gained control of the London Telegraph media group, and directed it to support Margaret Thatcher and Benjamin Netanyahu. Black’s holding also included the Chicago Sun-Times and The Jerusalem Post. Hollinger had an International Advisory Board which included Perle, Thatcher, Lord Peter Carrington, and Henry Kissinger. On the board of directors was Leslie Wexner, the man who appears to have provided the first big tranches of funds to Epstein. Black was convicted of financial crimes in July 2007, and sentenced to over six years in prison. In the past few years, he has been writing opinion pieces for the extremist conservative Epoch Times. Conrad Black is not related to Leon Black.]

Former police chief says Trump knew of Epstein abuse in 2006

[Drop Site Daily: February 10, 2026]

Former Palm Beach police chief Michael Reiter told the Federal Bureau of Investigation in a 2019 interview that President Donald Trump called him in July 2006, saying Jeffrey Epstein’s sexual abuse of teenage girls was widely known in New York and Palm Beach, according to a new report from The Miami Herald. Reiter’s account directly contradicts Trump’s public denials.

Bondi’s Binders: Failed State Ragebait — Why was the Attorney General screaming at Congress?

Jim Stewartson, Feb 12, 2026 [MindWar]

…Bondi’s motivations for signing up to Trump’s organized crime government are numerous. Her conflicts of interest are extraordinarily clear.

First, she was the Attorney General in Florida from 2011 to 2019, leaving office just a few months before Epstein was arrested by Bill Barr. For eight years, Epstein operated in her state without interference from law enforcement. In 2013, Donald Trump infamously donated $25,000 to her campaign, after which she declined to prosecute Trump University on fraud charges.

Either she knew what Epstein was doing and chose not to do anything about it, or she was too incompetent to know the most infamous pedophile in the world was still behaving like a pedophile in her state. Either way, she is personally invested in Epstein just going away.

Second, Bondi’s lobbying work is precisely aligned with the Trump regime. She was a lobbyist for private prison contractor GEO Group, whose main customer is ICE. And she was paid $115,000 per month to lobby Congress on behalf of Qatar.

Another recipient of Qatar’s largesse is Kash Patel….

Pam Bondi should be in jail for covering up for Jeffrey Epstein’s heinous crimes!

Dean Obeidallah, Feb 12, 2026

The consensus by the corporate media was that she was doing all this in the defense of her beloved Donald Trump. But what those media outlets are missing is that Bondi’s unhinged level of defensives was because she is guilty—and she knows it. Bondi has long protected Epstein and the powerful men who raped children and were trafficked women. She must be criminally investigated to determine if she broke the law doing this!

Before becoming US Attorney General, Bondi served for eight years as Florida’s AG from 2011 to 2019. That is the very state and time that Jeffrey Epstein was running his sprawling child rape and sex trafficking ring. As Trump’s own first term DOJ told us in a 2020 report, after Epstein was released from prison in 2009, he returned to his lavish lifestyle and was able to “continue his abuse of minors.”….

Attorney for Epstein Survivors Warns That Justice Is Impossible With Bondi as AG

[The Intercept, February 13 2026]

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Short Take: Modern Infrastucture Miracles

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On February 15, 2026

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~by Sean Paul Kelley

The Chinese rail network now carries 23 million passengers a day. Multiply that by 365 and it carries 8.365 billion passengers a year. And does not account for the increase in passengers during major holidays.

Now consider these two facts. First, India’s rail network carries 23 million passengers a day also. But it took the Brits and Indians 172 years to build out the network. China did it in under 30 years.

Second: California voted in 2008 to build a high speed rail network between Los Angeles and San Francisco with a completion date of 2022. Operations are projected to start in 2030 now.

Ponder that for a moment and then puke.

The future does not happen in America anymore.

Nota bene: Jan’s comment reminded me of something I saw in China. It was the summer of 2003. After the first big SARs outbreak. I was in far west China trying to get to India. At the time there was zero high speed rail. Understand? Zero. To get to Tibet and then Nepal and finally India I had to travel across Qinghai, starting in Goldmud where I ended up in Lhasa, Tibet.

If you’ll allow an old backpacking traveller a brag, I’d be grateful. At the time, every backpacker I ever met considered the Golmud to Lhasa bus trip the sine qua non of the complete backpacker/traveller. You could not consider yourself a true traveller if you had never made this journey. 40 hours above 10,000 ft. (3,050 meters), often times as high as 14,000 feet (4,267 meters) on a sleeper bus, in which every passenger has altitude sickness of one degree or another. Puke in the aisles. No clean up. Restroom breaks rare, maybe five the entire journey. It is a badge of honor I wear with pride to this day.

Late at night about 24 hours into the journey we drove in to a traffic jam of epic proportions. A crazed, disorganized, enormous traffic jam on a dirt road somewhere between Golmud and Lhasa high up on the Himalayan Plateau. It took an hour to get through. But what I saw mezmerized me like nothing else and I will never forget it. The Chinese, busy at Buddha knows what hour, building a High Speed Rail Link between Golmud and Lhasa, much constructed on damn near permafrost conditions. Look it up if you disbeleive me.

They did it. It’s a first class wonder, the new rail link, complete with oxygen bars, etc. . .

But me, I’m glad I did it the hard way. It has more meaning.

Lamentatio finalis: Our mad rush to adopt technology in every aspect of our lives has robbed us of many beautiful and rare experiences, many of which are gone forever. I’ll leave you with one example. In 2008 I took the ferry from Penang, Malaysia across the Straits of Malacca. It was a leisurely six hour ride from Penang to Medan, Sumatra. While making the crossing I saw just how strategic a waterway it was: the sheer mass of container ships was mind boggling.

When I returned to Malaysia in 2011 specifically to share with my father the experience of the ferry ride acrosss the Straits, the ferry had been shuttered by low cost airlines flying from Penang to Medan. To me that is a loss equivalent to someone torching a Rembrandt in a Dutch museum. Irrevocable. Gone forever.

Following Up My Silver Post By Answering A Damn Good Comment

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On February 15, 2026

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~by Sean Paul Kelley

So, Marku asks:

But aren’t most of those contracts never expecting to take physical delivery? Just gambling, er excuse me, investment hedging?

Or is the problem that given that Comex price is under the real, that all those contracts *want* to be exercised in delivery so they can arbitrage to China (who has a real price?)

I’ve always found futures confusing, thanks for any help.

Answer is complex by I’ll do my best to simplify. I’m going to base my answer on much of what Dario says in this video, so it might be worth a watch for anyone interested in how the contracts are viewed at the Comex versus SHFE.

All contracts traded on Comex are designed to take physical delivery. Understood? They are designed for industrial hedging so corporations can smooth out their expenses on needed commodities. That said, under Clinton and accelerating under Bush, the CTFC made a whole raft of rule changes that changed the PRIME AIM of the commodities markets from honest price discovery into something resembling a casino. I’ll spare you the details, but I was in the business at the time and I still can’t believe what they did.

As for arbitraging Comex prices over those on the SHFE. Rumor is someone tried it–a Chinese trader–and got hammered hard. Main reason: the cost of shipping and arranging for delivery, even if, as rumored, he made the trade when there was a $20 USD premium at SHFE, and all the subsequent logistics of physical delivery, added up rather too quickly. But as a former arbitrage clerk myself, kudos to the brother for trying. Fortune does favor the bold. Until she doesn’t: fickle bitch she is.

Futures are identical to stock options: calls-are the expectation a stock will rise-and puts are the opposite. On the commodities exchanges you buy long exepcting the price to go up, but your buying price of the long give you the right to exercise it at that price not its current high, if it did go up. Buying short means you expect the commodity to go lower. You can also combine the two into a hedging bridge of sorts, where you give yourself the right to exercise the contracts within a range. This is what hedging truly is. Not hedgefund bullshit. I used to know the head commodities trader at Pioneer Flour Mills here in San Antonio and how he explained it was elegant. One of the reasons I went into the business.

I’ve never mentioned this before but what made me leave was a long time ago I was sitting first class next to a former international business man. He asked most of the questions, but the upshot is I was sitting next to John Perkins and the questions he asked me opened my eyes to what I was truly participating in. It was only a matter of time til I left.

The US commodities exchanges were originally established, and this was hammered into me when I took my commodities trader’s exam, for price discovery and sanctity of the market mechanism. Used to be you had to own or expect to take delivery of the underlying commodity you were hedging/selling/buying. Now you don’t.

At the SHFE the rules are much similar to the pre-Clinton era rule changes. And Chinese regulators are hardcore. They’ve shutdown at least 25 trading groups accounts last week alone for breaking the rules, which Dario explains in his video.

Hope this helped.

 

Open Thread

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On February 14, 2026

11 Comments

Use to discuss topics unrelated to recent posts.

Trump’s Religious Liberties Commission Implodes Over Zionism

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On February 13, 2026

16 Comments

POTUS Trump’s Religious Liberty Commission is tearing itself apart in a fight about zionism.

The leading dissident, Carrie Prejean Boller, the 2009 Miss California USA is a right-wing Catholic who picked a fight with zionists at a meeting of the Commission.

Here’s how NBC describes the dust-up:

A member of the federal Religious Liberty Commission has been ousted after a hearing this week that featured tense exchanges on the definition of antisemitism. The ousted member, Carrie Prejean Boller, had defended prominent commentator Candace Owens, who routinely shares antisemitic conspiracy theories.

Prejean Boller, a model turned conservative activist, denied that Owens had ever said anything antisemitic, quoted a Bible verse that attributed the death of Jesus to Jews and pushed back on the idea that some people mask antisemitism in their criticism of Israel.

“No member of the commission has the right to hijack a hearing for their own personal and political agenda on any issue,” said Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, chair of the commission, in a statement Wednesday. “This is clearly, without question, what happened Monday in our hearing on antisemitism in America. This was my decision.”

Boller fired back on X.com that Patrick could not fire her, only Trump could.

Patrick’s tweet got over 4.4 million views and Boller’s reply 2.3 million views. This is the mainstream of 21st Century American political discourse.

Boller spoke to Yair Rosenberg at The Atlantic:

“It is not a biblical mandate that I have to worship Israel,” Carrie Prejean Boller told me today. The former Miss California USA turned social-media influencer was dismissed from President Trump’s Religious Liberty Commission yesterday after drawing charges of anti-Semitism. But, she wanted to make clear, she regrets nothing—and has no intention of disappearing without a fight.

On Tuesday, the Religious Liberty Commission held its fifth hearing, in Washington, D.C., to discuss anti-Jewish prejudice. Meetings of blue-ribbon panels are typically sleepy, stage-managed affairs designed to serve the purposes of whatever administration put them together. But Boller had other ideas. She repeatedly interrogated the participants about their opinions on anti-Zionism, which she distinguished from anti-Semitism, and complained that other panelists had called Candace Owens and Tucker Carlson, the wildly popular podcasters, anti-Semitic.

Video of Boller’s interjections went viral, sparking furious recriminations on the right. “I’m with her,” declared former Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene. Boller took to social media in her own defense and began resharing others’ support for her conduct, including Owens’s claim that the two women were being assailed for refusing to “support the mass slaughter and rape of innocent children for occult Baal worshipers.” Boller’s performance raised her profile—her previously marginal X account increased its following 20-fold. “Be a good Goyim and give me a follow,” she posted Tuesday afternoon, inaccurately using the plural form of the colloquial Hebrew word for “non-Jew.” Yesterday, Texas Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick, the chair of the Religious Liberty Commission, announced that Boller had been removed, saying in a statement that “no member of the Commission has the right to hijack a hearing for their own personal and political agenda on any issue.”

Trump influencer Laura Loomer chimed in (600K views) to claim that the White House ordered Boller’s removal from the Commission:

For those not following this administration closely, here’s some background on Loomer and her role in Trump 2.0 (“chief loyalty enforcer”) from PBS last summer:

Laura Loomer has successfully lobbied to remove aides from several key government roles, including the National Security Council. Despite her close alliance with the president, she’s drawn some foes within the Republican Party, including Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene.

Laura Loomer: “I’m not working for President Trump. I’m not getting paid by President Trump. I’m not in the Trump White House. I wasn’t even on the Trump campaign. And yet I feel like every single day it’s a full-time job just to make sure the president is protected and that he’s receiving the information that he needs to receive.”

The open war over zionism on the right side of the political spectrum is a dramatic contrast to the more subdued conflict between Democratic party voters (who overwhelmingly oppose Israel) and their elected officials (who overwhelmingly support Israel).

Silver: East Versus West

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On February 12, 2026

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In my long post about silver prices, I talked about a reversion to the mean. This is something that frequently happens in life: something overshoots the norm and then it swings back and overshoots the abnormal. Slowly but surely it finally settles smack in the middle of the bell curve, to use a shit metaphor.

This is what we’re seeing in silver right now. For 150 years silver has underpinned a great deal of US monetary decisions. Then, for the last 50 years the United States fostered and protected a rentiers silver market by turning a blind eye to manipulations in the paper markets at the Comex and simultaneously creating a rentier situation for the distributors of silver buillon in the country. If I went into detail how that happened this post would never end. Needless to say it was a very cozy arrangement that is unraveling every day and it’s something that has the large silver distributors very, very worried.

I’ll give you the short version: the US mint prints the coins, proofs, bars, etc. It then sells that silver to about five large national distributors for a little bit under the spot price of silver. Then those large distributors turn around and mark up the silver bulliion by about 25% and charge huge premiums for every coin, bar, proof, etc., Cozy! Like I said, and like all good rent markets it produces no value. N0w, sometimes this has been done to keep silver in a stable range for industrial purposes, but after the US wholesale deindustrialized beginning with Clinton but turbocharging under Bush–to fund our illegal wars–the justitication fell apart.

While we sold off all our capital stock to China, its demand for silver became unslakable. As I noted in a previous post one gigawatt [error corrected, mea culpa, SPK] hour of power from solar panels requires 1,000,000 ounces of silver and that’s just for solar panels. Silver goes into so many more things than we can possibly imagine. Pick someting electronic in your house; its got silver in it. Silver is the single most important industrial metal in the world because it is the most conductive and oxidizes less than only one other metal: gold.

But I’ve digressed from my argument.

For at least 150 years, starting with the opium wars, the balance of trade from East to west was very much skewed to the west: let’s call it what it was: economic pillage masquerading as lifting up all our little brown sisters and brothers. All of the wealth in the east, and that includes India, was over the course of 350 years, siphoned west. That’s economic fact, although people don’t teach economic history, which is a shame. They should.

I say all of this because the Comex has literally become a casino. For example, the total number of registered bars, registered meaning it’s in the vaults and it’s there for delivery has fallen under 100,000,000 ounces it’s now 98,000,000 ounces.

To make matters worse, there are 65,000 contracts of open interest on silver futures at the Comex right now, due in two weeks, that if optioned require the delivery of 325,000,000 ounces of physical silver. Where is that kind of silver going to come from? Pawn shops? Coin dealers? GTFO! Comex is in the grips of a slow, existential crisis, that it’s going to lose.

If those contracts are exercised at the end of February, because they’re March contracts, there is absolutely no telling what kind of chaos the US financial system might endure. Why do I say the entire financial system? The dreaded ‘D’ word.

Remember mortgage backed securities, CDOs, CDO2, synthetic CDOs etc. . .

There are similar derivatives in the silver market, but they exist in a black box, undisclosed so nobody really knows how much the open interest or notional value really is or who owns the risk—although the prevailing guess is about $1trillion USD notional. If the Comex implodes the cascade effects might well resemble what happened to those two Bear Stearns Hedge Funds in the summer of 2007 that set off the 2008 Financial Crisis.

Even if the Comex manages to extend contracts out a few more months, the physical supply of silver does not exist. I repeat there is no physical supply anywhere that can meet this year‘s demand for silver. Only two places comes close to the silver necessary for global demand: one is already fully allocated in the Canadian vaults in Ottawa in Toronto and that silver is not going to be let go of. The other is silver owned by retail investors. But as I have said before: silverbugs aren’t going to sell for $95, not $120, not $175. Not going to happen.

So in two weeks time, it looks like the Comex is going to implode.

How about over in the East? What’s China doing?

Chinese market regulators are actually doing their job. Here’s how, as I am quoting Dario at this link:

“What the Shanghai future exchange just did and what they did yesterday is effectively saying that starting from the last month of February that (it’s not a coincidence is the same day when the settlement for March 2026 futures contracts and the Comex begins starting) from that day any participant in the exchange that is not purchasing contracts for [physical] hedging purposes and even if purchased for hedging purposes they haven’t been allocated [a] physical delivery quota all their quota for silver in the front end contract is going to be brought down to zero.

So what the Shanghai future exchange here is saying is like okay game is over. We have to restrict the physical silver that we have left here for settlement for those that need it from an industrial perspective. So for hedging purposes and we need to keep the real purpose of the exchange going otherwise if things continue in this way we can effectively shut for business and that is going to be a huge mayhem not only across China but across Asia.

What’s China doing? Well, those communist bureaucrats that oversee the Shanghai Futures Exchange are doing something remarkable: they are working as hard as they can to preserve the sanctity of a free and fairly functioning market dedicated to true price discovery. Listen to the full podcast. You’ll listen in disbelief. The Chinese are better free-marketeers than the corrupt managers of the SEC. I’m dead serious. Chinese regulators make our SEC look like a collection of jackasses at a rodeo-clown show.

So, here is how this plays out: if Comex implodes—which is probable—but Shanghai muddles through, which given its bottom of the barrel minimum silver reserves is going to be extremely hard to pull off, but not impossible, massive amounts of wealth will accelerate their repatriation into the mainland. For over a thousand years silver formed the basis of Chinese monetary policy. They know what they are doing.

And the West? The West will reap what it sowed for near on 500 years. Our wealth is soon to be a multi-century river filling the current account surplus of the East.

Just watch.

IT SHOULD GO WITHOUT SAYING, EXCEPT IT MUST BE SAID: THIS IS NOT INVESTMENT ADVICE. THIS IS OPINION, FULL STOP. DYOR. 

 

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